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What Does It Mean that Residents in All 50 States Have Filed Petitions to Secede?
A lot of attention is being given to the fact that residents in all 50 states have filed petitions to secede from the United States.
Daily Caller reports:
By 6:00 a.m. EST Wednesday, more than 675,000 digital signatures appeared on 69 separate secession petitions covering all 50 states, according to a Daily Caller analysis of requests lodged with the White House’s “We the People” online petition system.
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Petitions from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas residents have accrued at least 25,000 signatures, the number the Obama administration says it will reward with a staff review of online proposals. (RELATED: Will Texas secede? Petition triggers White House review)
The Texas petition leads all others by a wide margin.
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States whose active petitions have not yet reached the 25,000 signature threshold include Alaska, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
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Fourteen states are represented by at least two competing petitions. The extra efforts from two states — Missouri and South Carolina — would add enough petitions to warrant reviews by the Obama administration if they were combined into petitions launched earlier.
Other states with multiple efforts include Alaska, California, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin.
As Google notes, web searches for the term “secession” are being run in a number of states:
Conservatives – such as Judge Napolitano and Ron Paul - say that the states have the right to secede. And Texas governor Rick Perry said that Texas has a right to secede (although he counsels against it at the current time).
On the other hand, most liberals say that the Civil War ended the state’s right to secede. Huffington Post is covering the wave of secession petitions … to ridicule them.
Daily Kos suggests that “secessionists can secede by renouncing their citizenship“.
As the Daily Caller notes, liberals have launched their own counter-petitions:
In a … nose-thumbing aimed at Texas’ conservative majority, progressives from the liberal state capital of Austin responded Monday with a petition to secede from their state if Texas as a whole should decide to leave the Union.
Late Tuesday a second group of Texans, this one from Houston, lodged their own White House petition. Secession-minded Texans, they wrote, “are mentally deficient and [we] do not want them representing us. We would like more education in our state to eradicate their disease.”
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A group from El Paso, too, wants no part of an independent Texas. “Allow the city of El Paso to secede from the state of Texas,” their petition reads. “El Paso is tired of being a second class city within Texas.”
Yahoo News argues that the petitions are meaningless:
The petitions are little more than symbolic—and nothing new. Similar petitions were filed after the 2004 and 2008 elections.
Libertarian website Lew Rockwell argues in a piece by Ryan McMaken that nothing will come of the current secession attempts, but that the principle is important:
I have no illusions about this latest secession petition phenomenon. Nothing will directly come of this, and the people who are behind it are mostly people who would be singing “God Bless America” at the tops of their lungs had Mitt Romney been elected. On the other hand, it sure has a lot of people talking about secession, which shows that the idea of it remains an important part of the American political consciousness.
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The Declaration makes a simple argument:
- Humans have rights from the Creator.
- Governments exist to secure those rights (a debatable assertion but we’ll roll with it).
- When the government fails to secure those rights, we can ditch it and start our own government.
That’s pretty much all it says. If you thought that was true in 1776, when tax rates were 1% and there was no such thing as a the EPA or the FBI or the IRS, why is it not true now? Because we’re so much more free now? And, no, the Declaration did not say that the government is free to violate rights as long as people get to vote on it.
The Declaration establishes that there’s no such thing as treason, and a free government requires the assumption of just secession. Lysander Spooner explains[:]
Thus the whole Revolution [of 1775–1783] turned upon, asserted, and, in theory, established, the right of each and every man, at his discretion, to release himself from the support of the government under which he had lived. And this principle was asserted, not as a right peculiar to themselves, or to that time, or as applicable only to the government then existing; but as a universal right of all men, at all times, and under all circumstances.
Ron Paul says that states have the right so secede … and predicts they will do so when the dollar collapses:
My take has been the same for many years … I believe that America – like the Soviet Union – may break up when corruption and tyranny lead to the break down of basic systems.
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http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/11/28/us/20091128-foodstamps.html
http://cdn.urbancincy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/2012-Election-Resul...
Election results and foodstamp usage on the county level. Food stamp usage data is 3 years old.
Good info. Statistics can be confusing to the people who can't do multistep problems.
the link I used says "Year: Feb 2011" - unless you're referring to the nytimes chart you linked, which indeed says "2009" - and I've no doubt benefits vary by county, in all states, particularly of late, as more and more families fall off the edges they were teetering on. but thanks for the "voting by county" map, it is indeed telling.
for what it's worth, I'm all for everyone "succeeding" from everything they can, the more personal independence the better - it's those voting to remove another's right to the same non-interference by the State that needs highlighting.
(best fuu avatar imo)
I was indeed referring to the NY Times chart, it was the only county level map I could find quickly. I was just thinking that the by state map doesn't tell the whole story.
Mine too.
Edit: http://oi49.tinypic.com/343hszn.jpg
Here is a blended image of the two maps. Clear to greenish for foodstamp usage.
Definition of a Democracy.....
"I am a member of the larger group that doesn't like what you malcontents in the minority are doing....soze you fuckers need to sit down and shut up"
Democracy is two wolf and suckling lamb vote on dinner menu!
No - 1 wolf and 99 sheep.
Guess who gets lambchops, regardless of the vote?
Vote go 3-0 for PIZZA
Vote is then 2-1 for mutton with extra cheese, but tyrannical leader ban meat and trans fats, so sheeple is safe until docile lamb is discover to drink 32 oz. soda in styrene foam cup, then is haul away to FEMA camp for rehabilitation.
Boris familiar with gulag gastronomic policy
Soon is Dog Breath, too! Dog Breath, meet komrad latex,... komrad latex, this is Dog Breath rear orifice.
Boris is sorry, is Dog Breath have latex allergy!? Maybe is prefer probe by Nitrile instead?
an arguement breaks out over ordering vegetarian, meat lovers, or all loaded.
Gyros it is.
Hot peppers and luscious strips of 'Babe'?
I liken it to the tantrum toddlers throw when they don't get what they want.
Just leave the country if you are that unhappy. Good luck with that.
I heard the same crap when "W" got a second term.
There was seccsion talk then and threats of leaving the county. Nobody went much of anywhere.
The Reps may be more scared now than the Dems were then.
The GOP coaltion of religious nut cases that Reagan cobbled together to fight the culture wars and keep the party going for the truly wealthy is dying...literally.
Who are they going to recruit now?
Well played flattrader! You really F'd them in the A with that post!
Fuck You, why should we leave? WE are the ones who WORK and pay for your EBT card. No person with an IQ above 100 in this country can agree with the way things are going. Those of US that work and PAY taxes are feed up and are done supporting the rest of you who are TOO lazy to do honest work for a living. Reset the clock to 100 years ago and this discussion would not be happening. There was no Welfare or EBT or Obamaphone back then. Time to RESET.
My IQ is 139 and I am staying. I don't like the future of our country(and world) but it cannot be helped by anyone from the blue team or the red team you goddamn simpleton. Grow up and get ready for the collapse. Mittens wasn't going to be able to prevent shit!
Exactly. Was Mittens going to dissolve the FED and restructure the banking system that has been so good to him and his real masters?
Neither party is going to do that.
And Ron Paul is nothing but a Christian Reconstructionist nut case masquerading as a Libertarian.
Let's all go over the cliff and sort it out at the bottom.
Being bright doesn't mean being right. I'm smarter than 95% of the people, but that doesn't mean I can time things. My experience is that group think is a big deal and sometimes hard to predict. People react over the strangest things.
now you'll upset ron paul and all those microscopic supporters of his meme.
They can all go to Texas after he returns, seceed and elect him President of the Christian Reconstructionist Republic of Texas.
it is wrong and disallowed for a state to secede from a union of states, whether in north america or in europe or in asia or whatever.
it is likewise wrong and disallowed for the us to ever stop being a member of nato or the league of nations or nafta or the un or whatever.
it is likewise wrong and disallowed for an individual to ever unfriend someone on fb or to delete a myspace account or cancel a verizon plan or stop being a member of a civic organization or a church or a committee or to quit a job or terminate a marriage.
once in, always in. no matter what.
your memberships also bind your children and their children. forever. irrevocably. in perpetuity.
must....work....harder....
I never know how to take you, but in this case you're just being a likeable smart ass;)
Sounds like a frickin' phone contract.
(BTW, Phone Power is a bunch of crooks who can see me in hell about the third non-existent year of their fuckin' contract for their piece of shit non service.)
"Only 49 states can secede, unless the last one is seceding from DC."
Why not tell DC to secede...Problem solved.
El Paso is not a second class city in Texas, it's the asshole of the USA...
El Paso is not a second class city in Texas, it's the asshole of the USA...
Not quite the asshole, I can name a 100 Northern cities worse,or at least as bad.
Problem is, is El Paso is the second Republic de Mehico'.
El Paso is not a second class city in Texas, it's the asshole of the USA...
Not quite the asshole, I can name a 100 Northern cites worse.
Problem is, is El Paso is the second Republic de Mehico'.
If you see something (a redcoat), say something (shoot the son of a bitch!)